


twenty years of snow

by meikuree (rillarev)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cuddling, Drinking, F/F, Hook-Up, Sexual Tension, pieck being pieck
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:23:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21994480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rillarev/pseuds/meikuree
Summary: Pieck bumps into Yelena at a lesbian nightclub. She gets more than she bargained for.(pieck x yelena, modern big city AU)
Relationships: Pieck/Yelena (Shingeki no Kyojin), pikulena - Relationship
Comments: 18
Kudos: 57





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve wanted pikulena content for the longest time, so i decided to take things into my own hands and create it myself
> 
> i'm not the best at figuring out nitty-gritties so I've taken artistic license with some things like the fact that Pieck and Yelena can somehow hold an audible conversation in a nightclub (maybe the club has separate sections for the bar and the deafening area where everyone moxies?) or the fact that pieck and zeke worked at a nondescript store.
> 
> title taken from regina spektor's "20 years of snow"

Pieck hadn’t initially known what to expect when she approached Yelena in a club-- but ending the night being kissed hard by her against a wall wouldn’t have been it. Thinking about it, that had been quite the escalation from inviting her over to the bar.

Not that she was in the headspace to think. Not right now, not with Yelena’s hot lips mouthing at her collarbones and her right hand unbuttoning her blouse—deft, but maddeningly slow—and her fingers carded in Yelena’s hair, urging her on as she moaned.

And Pieck had thought _she_ was being friendly when she waved at the somehow familiar, mostly aloof woman sitting a few metres away and invited her to join her for a drink.

It didn’t take long for Pieck to work out why she recognised the woman—she had seen her a few times from when she still worked the front desk at Zeke’s store. One of Zeke’s friends, it seemed. She had come by every now and then to chat and smoke with Zeke outside the store’s doors. Once she had caught Pieck staring at her when she waited as Zeke sorted out a shipment in the back. Pieck simply showed her one of her prize-winning smiles, not one to bother feigning embarrassment. For a split second, the woman’s expression remained deadpan and inscrutable, her eyes boring into Pieck’s. Then she broke out into a brief, but warm smile. Right then Zeke had reappeared and they walked outside again for another one of their enigmatic chats. Pieck watched their tall backs disappear behind the sliding doors.

“What’s her name?” Pieck had asked Zeke after he came back.

“Who?”

“That blond friend of yours.”

Zeke had simply looked at her with an expression of amused puzzlement, then told her: Yelena. Oddly feminine for a woman who dressed in dress shirts and tailored pants and looked like she could easily fight a man, but also fitting for such a magnetic woman. It did mean “bright and shining one”, after all, and Yelena certainly stood out enough to catch Pieck’s attention.

They didn’t encounter each other again until the nightclub, which was a pity because Pieck had been hoping to strike up a proper conversation with her and get to know her. There was something in her imposing stature that drew Pieck to her. She would never admit it to Zeke, but women like Yelena were pretty close to her type: short hair, intimidating, and intelligent (you had to be fairly sharp to get along with Zeke well, after all).

A lot had happened in the intervening months since the last time Pieck saw her at the store and their chance encounter at the nightclub. For one, Pieck was no longer friends with Zeke after he backstabbed her friends at the store, and she stopped working for him. She had also moved out into a new place, away from her friends Mina and Annie, when their lease ended and they had to move back home to Liberio. She became familiar with the unique brand of loneliness one feels from living in a big city alone without anyone to call on. It felt as if she was living in hostile territory, a nest of her enemies, if she dwelt on it too long. She made sure to keep her head up and remind herself that she was here to support her ill father.

When she spotted Yelena alone in the crowd at a lesbian club, then, it made sense to call her over even if they had exchanged exactly zero lines of conversation together and were technically closer to strangers than acquaintances, even if she might still be one of Zeke’s allies. It was probably the alcohol-fuelled bravado. And maybe the desire to talk to someone from her old life before she nonconsensually broke from loneliness.

For a few seconds Yelena looked as though she was going to ignore her and looked away, but she suddenly got up, and sauntered over. Pieck was suddenly glad that she’d put in effort into her outfit (a nice Thurman-esque blazer and blouse) and makeup that night.

“Pieck,” Pieck introduced as Yelena sat down beside her. “Yelena, if I remember right?”

“Yes,” Yelena answered. “I remember you. Zeke’s spoken fondly about you.”

Pieck tensed slightly at the mention of Zeke’s name. The unpleasant memories were still too fresh. Did Yelena know that--?

She took a swig of her drink—they called it liquid courage for a reason after all-- and decided to change the subject. “What brings you here, Yelena?”

She got a sad smile and a non-committal shrug in return. “Broke up with a girl a while back. Just trying to meet new people. And you?”

Pieck hadn’t expected Yelena to be so open. Surreptitiously, her cheeks began to flush, and not because of the alcohol. Though hopefully the neon lighting hid her blushing well. The implication in her words was heady. “Same here. Just trying to be social. Make friends and all that jazz.”

”Mm,” Yelena agreed, “though a club’s perhaps not a place where socializing comes to mind.”

“Hey, I could say the same for you.”

“I’m trying to meet new people—I didn’t specify what kind of meeting I was looking for.”

That earned a choke from Pieck. She wasn’t sure if Yelena was flirting with her or implying interest beyond innocent lines—it was hard to tell with her frustratingly unreadable expression. Though both wouldn’t be unwelcome by any means. She cleared her throat before continuing.

“Well, cheers to our attempts,” she tried. Then, noticing Yelena’s glass was empty, she quickly offered, “Can I buy you a drink?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” Yelena replied, and she smiled that rare smile again. Pieck felt like she’d won a contest.

* * *

Pieck and Yelena continued talking and swapping stories into the night, miraculously avoiding the topic of Zeke throughout somehow. Yelena was surprisingly friendlier than Pieck had given her credit for, even if she was still more standoffish and brusque than most people under the influence of alcohol. She was manageable to get along with and they fell into a comfortable rhythm. For one, Pieck didn’t feel any of the usual pressure to engage in performative small-talk with Yelena, for which she was grateful. And Yelena was also attractive, with her commanding presence but clever conversation and her gentlemanly demeanor, which made it all the more pleasurable to talk to her. The last one was going to be a problem. Yelena alternated between hot and cold, intimidating and distant one moment then warm the next—she was a wildcard, and Pieck sensed that there were greater depths of ruthlessness to her she hadn’t even fathomed, but Pieck seemed to have gotten on her good side. As the night drew on and the club came alive, Pieck decided now was as good a time as any. Yelena had shown no sign of wanting to be dispossessed of her presence.

“Dance with me?” she asked Yelena, almost too quietly. They were sitting very closely now—either the alcohol or (Pieck hoped) their mutual magnetism had drawn them together.

Yelena paused, almost as if she was weighing her options up. Then she held out her hand. But before dragging her away, Pieck grasped it in her palm and kissed her outstretched hand gently, almost reverently— the gesture drew a look of surprise and a flicker of something more animalistic in Yelena’s eyes. Only then Pieck smiled, and led her to the dance floor.

There was little point in beating around the bush after that. Yelena’s assent to everything was for Pieck a fairly good confirmation that her interest in Yelena was reciprocated. As far as Pieck’s intuition was concerned, they were going to dance to a foregone conclusion. And her intuition was, if anything, rarely wrong.

They were thereafter engaged in a something resembling wordless, captivating ritual of tangos and unstated physical proximity as Pieck became acquainted with all the ways Yelena’s body could move in time against hers with the right level of inhibition removed. Her intuition became less intuition and more prescience when Yelena gripped her hips, making it work despite the canyon of a height difference between them; when Pieck splayed her hands across the small of her back to steady herself and Yelena closed the gap between both of them; when Yelena leaned down to press her forehead to Pieck’s and she breathed raggedly against her mouth, enough alcohol in her breath for a spark to kindle a fire with it; and when Yelena’s eyes closed and her lips finally closed in and claimed Pieck’s.

Briefly Pieck wondered what her friends would think if they knew she’d just snogged a friend of Zeke’s. And what Zeke himself would think. But she was also resolved to forget all traces of him, and threw her arms around Yelena’s neck to deepen their kiss as Yelena craned her back down and fisted her hands in the collar of Pieck’s blouse for a more comfortable angle.

The noise around them filtered out to nothingness as Pieck’s world narrowed down to contain only the kiss. She tasted a flicker of gin on Yelena’s tongue: bitter but heady, leaving her wanting more.

When she parted to catch her breath, Yelena’s pupils were dilated, her lips slightly agape; she clearly wanted her, and the realization made Pieck shudder.

For her part, Pieck had wanted her since she caught Yelena’s eye all those months ago, since Yelena joined her with that cool casualness of her. But for now, Pieck was dragging them to a corner of the club where the noise was less deafening so they could talk.

Leaning her back against the wall, she let out a deep sigh to catch her breath and looked Yelena in the eyes. “You alright with this?” She breathed, wanting to make sure.

Yelena smirked. “Would I have kissed you if I wasn’t?”

The only response Pieck could think of was to shoot the cocky woman before her an annoyed glare, having been left wordless by the situation she was in— making out with a hot, attractive, jaw-droppingly enthralling woman— so she simply pulled Yelena back in by her collar to kiss her deeply again. Soon enough Yelena peppered her kisses downward and began to press open mouthed kisses to the exposed parts of her neck as Pieck stood on the tips of her feet to give her as much access as possible. Her neck was a particularly sensitive spot, and she had to bite down on her lip to stop herself from moaning too loudly.

Pieck knew she had to move this elsewhere now or she would regret it. So Pieck pulled Yelena back up to get her attention and wasted no time.

“Your place or mine?”

Yelena contemplated the question for a few seconds. “My place isn’t really that convenient but if yours is further we can go the—“

“No. Mine’s closer,” Pieck insisted. “Five minutes’ walk. From here,” she clarified.

“Well then, we better start walking,” Yelena replied with a huffy undercurrent of _why’d you bother asking then_. But as Yelena turned to get her coat, Pieck caught the faintest hint of a grin on her face, and she smiled to herself, like a satisfied cat.

* * *

Pieck hadn’t taken Yelena for the type to do this— whatever _this_ was— let alone have an unnameable dalliance with her. The woman, on first impression, seemed to put her defenses high up and barricade people from infiltrating her thoughts, and Pieck had assumed this extended to physical intimacy for her. But in fairness, it had been a while since she’d last brought a broad home. She also hadn’t known anything about Yelena besides her name up till half an hour ago. She’d just been looking for company— of any sort— and here she was now in her room, getting more than she bargained for.

It had been an effort getting through her door, with how Yelena was taking every opportunity to get acquainted with her neck and upper body through more kisses, but Pieck finally swung open her door. The next moment, she found the back of her knees against her bed and Yelena locking her hands above her head, that smoldering gaze of her pinning her down.

Pieck wet her lips, unbelievably horny. Her body was pale from the moonlight creeping in through the slip of her open windows-- and also pale with something more, something like hunger for the woman before her. She might have wanted for a body to warm her bed more badly than she’d admit. Or maybe just Yelena’s body.

Thereafter Yelena took apart her blazer and blouse and the rest of their clothes. She paused after unhanding Pieck’s bra to graze her fingers over her breasts, and if Pieck hadn’t been listening for it, she would have missed Yelena’s too-quiet whisper of “you’re so beautiful”, said not with any awareness of an audience but said simply because it was irreducible fact, like oxygen in the veins or the twenty years of snow that had interceded before they could meet like this. Pieck almost moaned at that alone.

Then Yelena slotted a thigh between Pieck’s legs as she thumbed her nipples with one hand and licked at them, pleasuring her until Pieck was crying out for her to _please please fuck me_ and she moved down to slide her fingers into the wetness of her centre.

And then Yelena’s tongue joined her fingers as she lapped at the bud atop her dripping sex. Pieck was momentarily glad that she lived alone because she was beginning to be unable to contain her moans and gasps. Yelena kept thrusting her fingers and sucking firmly on her clit, Pieck gripping her bedsheets and pillows for an anchor and it wasn’t long before Pieck was strung tight like a bow, shaking and shuddering and releasing into Yelena’s hands as she moaned Yelena’s name like her life depended on it.

Yelena leaned back and gazed at her handiwork, taking in Pieck’s breathless and boneless body and smirked as she licked her fingers clean. Pieck’s face reddened.

When Pieck recovered, she cupped Yelena’s face in her hands and pulled her closer onto the bed, moaning as she felt her breasts press against hers—and then she got to work returning the favour. First she explored the expanse of Yelena’s body, kissing her chest and palming her breasts. She noted the way Yelena’s breath hitched when Pieck kissed the dip in her hips and the insides of her thighs—muscular but creamy thighs she would die for, she absently noted as she went along—and then lowered her mouth onto her prize.

Where Pieck was forthcoming with her noises of praise and pleasure, Yelena was somewhat more inhibited. But Pieck soon got to know her tells—in a twitch of her body, in the way her breath became more ragged.

But in the middle, Yelena stilled and Pieck looked up, questioning.

“I’m not going to break,” Yelena deadpanned. Pieck simply quirked an eyebrow, urging her to explain. “I like it rough,” Yelena clarified, “use your teeth. Bite me.”

Pieck didn’t need to be told twice. Her expression turning wolfish, she moved up again to bite and suck bright marks into the dip between Yelena’s breasts, licking each bruise as it appeared before moving on. She gripped Yelena’s thighs and body harder and with more force—looking up now and then to make sure Yelena was fine—and instantly her body fired up, becoming more responsive. She was gasping now, throwing her head back as Pieck kissed and sucked a line of fire down her stomach.

When she reached the curls at the cusp of her stately body, Pieck gazed at Yelena again. The other woman’s pupils were blown wide, her breath ragged and her chest heaving. Gulping for just a second, Pieck dove down. This time her fingers joined her skilled tongue, and she thrust two fingers in. Yelena’s fingers curled themselves in Pieck’s hair, and encouraged, she added one more finger. An honest-to-goodness moan spilled out from Yelena as she did so, and Pieck flushed, her body aflame and her face erubescent.

Soon Yelena was gasping, and then her back crested and arched as she bit down on her knuckles on one hand and gripped Pieck’s hair hard with the other. And then Yelena was calling out her name as she climaxed. A deep, throaty moan escaped her as Pieck brought her down from her zenith carefully, continuing to suck at her clit until Yelena urged her up.

There they fell into a comfortable silence. Pieck was willing to let Yelena stay the night—it didn’t sound very appealing for her to go back wherever she stayed—and Yelena it seemed understand that silent message of hers.

“Mind if I smoke?” Yelena asked.

Interspersedly shaded and illuminated by rays of shadow and moonlight from the window, Pieck shook her head. As Yelena lit up her cigarette, she mused inwardly about how cliché it was—cigarettes after sex—but diplomatically accepted the smoke that Yelena offered her. When Yelena lit hers for her, it occurred to her that the act was, somehow, intimate in a way their sex hadn’t been.

“I’m not on speaking terms with Zeke right now, you know,” Pieck said suddenly. Her tongue was becoming loose, it seemed, in a way that made for strange pillow talk. But they had just bedded each other after all, and Yelena didn’t seem to be the sort to take offense.

Yelena took a drag of her smoke before replying. “I know. Of all the others, he was saddest about you.”

Pieck decided she didn’t want to probe and ask what she meant. She settled instead for inching in closer, removing the cigarette from her lips and replacing it with Yelena’s beguiling lips instead. There was time for more talk later. For now, Pieck just wanted her to stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT (15/12/20): I think I should give readers a heads up that this was the first fanfic I ever wrote— as a result I experimented with my writing style a lot between the first and second chapter of this story. the writing style will be fairly different from what you see in this chapter when you read the next chapter (more verbose, more flowery). it still follows up on the plot, but I suppose I should put it out there that it might deviate from what you expect based on this chapter. 
> 
> this is also a note to say this has been and will remain on hiatus for a while because my life is a constant frenzy of busy-ness. but if you want this to be continued feel free to let me know in the comments— I might be motivated to hurry up with an update! 
> 
> (on that note, I am generally pleased to hear from readers — don’t be afraid to leave feedback!)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after, and bonding over coffee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my writing style here departs a little from the first chapter - when i wrote that it was my first fanfic ever and i was still trying to figure out how i liked to write. but i've gotten more into my groove now. either way, hopefully it still feels like a holistic story. 
> 
> i really missed these two. have some self-indulgent interactions i wrote between the two of them!

As far as the list of absurdly-random-life-experiences-to-have-at-least-once-before-you-die went, something in Pieck’s cosmic sixth sense suddenly told her two things: one, that meeting Yelena was on that list, and two, that she would likely look back upon it as a momentous development that changed the hill her life had capered its heretofore unremarkable trajectory down. Under cover of the nacreous urban moonshine flecking her bed, where Pieck was now unapologetically spooning Yelena in irreverent fashion, it felt as though this was one of those moments so singular and inexplicably destined that Pieck’s whole life could have been a rehearsal for it without having known it.

Or that could simply be her over-intellectualising things again, especially after the high of successfully coaxing Yelena into _cuddling_ with her. As in, _the_ imperious Yelena with her reticent eyes and shark smile that looked like she would be more comfortable drowning you in stomach acid after tearing into you, than with sharing an intimate embrace. Pieck was pleased to be wrong, to say the least. 

She’d done it by addressing the dawning stiltedness encrusting itself in the wake of their ebbing carnal heat the same way she preferred to address any form of social awkwardness—by overcompensating and swinging to the other end of social acceptability. (She’d read her _bell hooks_ at fifteen and decided that hooks was right—life was too short to pour yourself into interactions with others just half a glass full.) “Are you a snuggler?” she’d earnestly asked Yelena, with rapture in her eyes and insouciance in her clever mouth. And when Yelena was too caught off guard by the brazenness of her question—_as in, here? Now?--_ to do little besides give a confused nod, Pieck simply chirped, “Oh good, me too,” and endeared her entire self to Yelena’s ember-warm body.

So that was how Pieck found herself where she was now, embracing Yelena like she was born to do it, ignoring the chasmal bad blood between their friends. Despite all indications to the contrary, it had genuinely occurred to Pieck at one point that sleeping with a bitter enemy’s friend was probably a bad idea. But in the current moment where her arms were coiled comfortably across the threshold of both their bodies, these politics felt meaningless, and perhaps Yelena felt the same way too. For the time being, right here and right now, she was just a twenty year-old woman nestling herself in the warmth of another woman. (And after all, hadn’t a wise poet once said, _keep your friends close and your enemies closer_, or something to that effect? And her bed was in the awkward liminal territory between being large enough for one and the company of two. This was prudent.)

“Is this comfortable for you?” Pieck asked as she closed her eyes and took advantage of her position to pepper not-so-subtle kisses to Yelena’s shoulder blades and the nape of her neck. Her hands wrapped themselves around Yelena’s and intertwined their fingers together.

She relished the imperceptible shudders that reverberated through Yelena as she did these things. When Yelena answered, rather calmly and contentedly, “Yes. Don’t worry,” Pieck smirked against her skin in response. One of them pulled the covers over the both of them, and that was that: Pieck fell asleep against the gentle movements of Yelena’s breathing, her hair splayed out on the pillow like happenstance seaweed tumbling against each other, the night free-flowing over the constant thrum of their every inhale and exhale.

* * *

In the dozy Saturday morning that ensued, Pieck woke up and found her bed bereft of one particular long woman. As she felt around the space beside her, she heard, more than saw, the noises of Yelena finishing up her shower in the bathroom and padding towards her bedroom.

She put on a tank top and some shorts and stretched as it occurred to her that she was due for a shower too-- that she’d forgotten to wash off her damned makeup last night. But once probably wasn’t enough for the bacteria to come home to roost, anyway. It was at that moment that Yelena came in, shutting the door behind her. Pieck turned around and came face to face with Yelena’s wet, mussed hair, looking rather like a bramble of autumnal straw, and her towelling the rest of her neck, and—was Yelena _wearing one of her shirts_?

She was indeed. It was a shirt depicting Henri Matisse’s _The Dance_ that had been screen-printed by hand, and which she’d bought from a vintage market after she’d read that it was important to support local sellers. Or in this case, local sellers who shamelessly plagiarised off one of fine art’s biggest names. Whatever—everyone had to survive in this rapacious capitalist hell however they could. She’d only take issue if they were hurting unknown female artists. The Shirt, as it happened, was also oversized for her, which explained why Yelena had picked it: it was one of the few that would have fit her snugly.

“Hi,” Pieck said, deciding she was too amused to care.

“Hi yourself,” Yelena answered.

“When did you wake up?” Pieck asked.

“Half an hour ago.”

“What’s with my shirt?” Pieck came out with it.

Yelena looked unruffled, as though wearing the clothes of random people who hooked up with was something she did every day. “Oh, this? I didn’t want to rewear my blouse last night,” she said, waving her palm noncommittally, showing no contrition whatsoever. Pieck secretly loved it. “it smelled of the gin I was downing too enthusiastically. I’ll return this to you another day.”

“Do you want breakfast?” Pieck switched gears to another topic. Here was the overcompensatory friendliness again. (Galliard had once chided her for this. “Stop bending backwards for every pretty girl who shows you more than ten seconds of attention,” he’d said. In response she’d retorted that he could fuck off back to god’s unholy backside. But besides, how could she not? Anyone would want food.) 

“That sounds lovely,” Yelena said, and Pieck resisted the urge to make a silly double entendre remark about how she wanted her eggs. Upon confirming that Yelena was fine with eggs, sausages, and mushrooms, Pieck got up to properly wash up and then cook for her guest.

Later, after they were done eating, Pieck left her number with Yelena. “Let’s meet again,” she said, with the full range of transparent shining sincerity she had in her, “so you can return my clothes. And for coffee, if you’d like.”

Yelena took the paper she’d written her number on and, in an unexpected gesture, pressed her lips to it with her eyes closed before smiling, slipping her blazer on, and turning to head out. But not before she murmured the words, “Yes, I would like.”

* * *

It was next week when Pieck got a text asking to meet on Saturday.

> **[unknown number, 11:25 AM]:** hello, is this pieck?
> 
> **[unknown number, 11:26 AM]:** are you free Saturday? let’s meet at the Survey Cups.
> 
> **[unknown number, 11:26 AM]:** it’s Y here, by the way.

That was how Pieck subsequently found herself at the café, not too far from her place thankfully, mentally clutching Yelena’s text messages like a talisman against the yawning tedium of her life. Work for her was—alright, enjoyable even, but not the most conversation-worthy thing about her existence. After walking out on Zeke’s depot store, she’d found some part-time work being an assistant librarian at Marley’s central library that fit a little more easily with her gigs tutoring micro-managed middle-class children for the state’s increasingly bamboozling graduation exams (she had the knack for it, the art of picking knowledge up by its wrists and somersaulting it into her cranium like she was the conqueror of cerebral mastery and then elucidating it in reassuringly simple terms for children and teenagers too hamstrung within an inch of their lives to enjoy their education. Mothers clamoured that she was a gifted teacher. She elected not to tell them anything about the time she’d devoured essays written by Baruch Spinoza and John Berger at 16 and then adumbrated those to an intimidated Galliard and pretty impressed Annie).

She came a few minutes early, so she ordered a flat white from the barista and then settled herself in a corner beside the café’s pellucid windows and, after texting Yelena that she was there, opened up a copy of the latest dose of feminist philosophy she’d been on a kick with—Judith Butler’s _Gender Trouble_\-- to parse through.

She, again, heard more than saw Yelena sliding into the seat opposite her and leaning forward with her chin perched in her palm to stare intently at her. “Hello there,” Yelena said, “nice to see you, and with some intellectual reading too.”

“Thanks,” Pieck chuckled, “though perhaps pretentious is a better word.”

“Perhaps, but I’d have no right to say that,” Yelena smiled. “Been interested in reading Judith Butler myself.”

The barista came over with Pieck’s coffee at that moment. “You should,” Pieck replied, taking a sip of her flat white. “I imagine you’d like her.”

“Why, because of the whole ‘gender is performative’ shtick?”

Pieck laughed softly and gestured vaguely at Yelena in response. “Yeah, I mean, just look at you. Did you want coffee?”

Yelena accepted and stood up to saunter over to the counter. Pieck got a good glimpse of what she wore: grey blazer (had she ever seen her outside of one?), a pastel dress shirt and tailored pants. Very trim and proper. She came back with a nitro cold brew, simmering with the hissing contents of its nitrogen.

“Here’s your shirt,” Yelena said as she handed her a bag. “Thanks for letting me borrow it.”

Pieck waved her hand. “It’s no problem. A favour for you letting me snuggle you.” She smiled lazily as she said the latter, a smile that only got more brazen as she saw Yelena pausing mid-sip to look at her, her eyelashes fluttering up. She wondered briefly if they would ever acknowledge the night they spent together instead of wading in oblique references around it.

“So what do you usually do during the week?” another obviating swerve. There was no hurry to talk about it.

“I work as a paralegal,” was Yelena’s factual answer.

Pieck gave an amused raise of her eyebrows. “I’ve a hard time believing you don’t play basketball for a living, Yelena. ”  
  
“So many people have said. That’s not original in the slightest,” Yelena scowled slightly. Of course Yelena would get grumpy. It _delighted _Pieck. The artifice of before was being left further and further away, and soon it would become forgotten country.

Drips of details about Yelena’s life made it into their conversation as they continued talking. Yelena, as it turned out, had an associate’s and was trying to go back to university some day to read law (a sufficiently sociopathic profession filled with craven money-grubbers, was Pieck’s crabby assessment). But what was more interesting than that were the responses Pieck provoked from her, despite not trying any harder than the effort she usually put in to flirt with other people. At one point she managed to make Yelena briefly _turn pink_, which Pieck hadn’t even thought was possible, with a well-timed comment about the irresistible friends that Zeke always seemed to hang out with. It was enchanting. Seeing her reaction, Pieck ploughed on ahead with a knowing smirk to ensure her efforts weren’t left in the dust of obscurity. “Yes, Yelena, I’m trying _to hit on you_.” She had never been one to mince her words, not when it came to beautiful women.

Yelena soon regained her composure and gave her a _look_ that made Pieck shiver. “I wasn’t aware there was a need to do that,” she remarked with a shit-eating smile. The next line was spoken in a warm breath next to Pieck’s ear as she leaned in. “I thought you made things pretty explicit when you took me home.”

It was Pieck’s turn to breathe unevenly. They could play at this. All of Pieck’s thoughts were devolving into singularly-minded sentiments that were adding up to something that, in common parlance, could be called an inhuman appetite. Not one to back down, she turned to face Yelena head on, her lips a breath away from Yelena’s. “Just keeping things interesting,” she whispered, blood rushing into her face like a primordial drumbeat.

The air was sparking now, though it might have well been from the apartment lint that Pieck carried openly in her pockets and the creases of her linen outerwear. She waited to see what Yelena would do, like prey waiting for providence to deliver it from the simmering fate a predator had in store for it. Her metaphors were jumbled today.

The answer was that Yelena was soon getting up to pay for both of their coffees, and getting ready to go. It had been an hour and a half since they sojourned to the gestalt steps of _The Survey Cups_, Pieck realised. Inwardly disappointed, she leaned back and gazed lazily at Yelena.

It was then Yelena surprised her by reaching out a palm. “Shall we?” _Will you come with me?_ Of course Pieck would. She was excited to find out what Yelena had in store for her, excited by the prospect of spending more time with Yelena and seeing how things would unfold into the seams and wrinkles of her prosaic universe.

She took Yelena’s hand again, kissing her like she had done all those days ago at the club, and stood up. “Let’s,” she said resolutely. She could guess at the barest outlines of what was probably coming ahead: them departing together like a ship into the course of foggy seas, venturing into something nebulous but inevitable, and Pieck throwing the key to the anchor away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as usual, comments/kudos clear my skin and water my crops. thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me on [tumblr](https://meikuree.tumblr.com/) and [twitter](https://twitter.com/meikuree)


End file.
